Red Horizons Painting

I am Semiha Karakuş. My education at Izmir Dokuz Eylül University Buca Faculty of Education Department of Painting and Aydın Doğan Fine Arts High School Painting Department gave me discipline. I worked as a teacher for a while and gave part-time trainings, but my main focus has always been on my own paintings. The education process formed a foundation for me, but developing my own technique was the most important turning point of my painting journey. In my art, I explore themes of migration, identity, alienation, and loneliness through misty atmospheres, spiraling birds, various objects, and solitary living figures. Rather than representing these subjects directly, I work through indirect metaphors; spiraling birds, empty boats, misty atmospheres, mirrors, and seemingly ordinary animal figures become the carriers of this approach. Thus, the paintings offer the viewer an experience that is both familiar and foreign: while appearing lost in nature, they simultaneously invite the viewer to confront their own inner journey. This layered narrative finds resonance not only on an aesthetic level but also on an intellectual one. Fog, as a metaphor for uncertainty and transition, forms the fundamental atmosphere of my work. These foggy spaces represent, on the one hand, identities caught between the past and the future, and on the other, the feeling of loss created by invisible boundaries. Spiral birds are a cyclical form where dispersion and union occur simultaneously; that is, a journey. They express the fragmentation of identities through migration and their subsequent merging and reshaping with different cultures. Through these metaphors, my work aims to make visible the tension between individual loneliness and collective belonging. The viewer discovers their own reflection, their lost aspects, and their reborn identity within the mist.